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athousanderrorsvia http://ift.tt/2oIEnJG:
It was in my newsletter (http://ift.tt/2oVqlAz) last year, and it’s not one that’s in the archive. Do sign up if you like this kind of thing.
***
I started Sunday Morning with the 11am showing of Rogue One at South London cultural institution that is the Peckham Plex. It was the last showing. It was one of the last showings in London. It’s the first time I’ve seen a film twice in the cinema since Fury Road.
I like it a lot. My one-line tweet review ROGUE 10/10 captures my basic feelings, but second time through, things are always going to change. You can’t cross that river twice. You change. The world changes. In the last month, more than most.
But I found it as effecting as first time, on average. Some bits more, some bits less, over-all similarly wet eyed. But it’s lingered in a different way. First time, I came out in a giggly fanboy rush. Second time, I’m pretty much crushed.
Being a working writer, I’m unpacking and trying to reversely analyse choices, and doing my own rewrites to make what I think the effect it’s looking for more efficiently. It’s just something I do, and have done for the vast majority of my life. It’s certainly true towards the end the tangle of game-logic makes it top heavy, and (as always happens when you explain so much) leads to even more questions . You can question the integration of all those fighter pilots into the final act, leaning into the “not a star wars film unless there’s a dogfight at the end” (I felt them weakest bits of Force Awakens, but landed better here for reasons I’ll go into…)
But underneath all that, I can’t question it too much, as I see its point and the reasons for doing so. That’s why we talk about choices, as it’s really about what you choose to prioritise. It’s all done to make the movie turn into a relay race, a chain of buckets. If any one individual doesn’t do their small thing, it fails, and the future for a galaxy far, far away is the Empire’s jackboot, forever.
This rebellion isn’t about one kid getting a lucky shot . This rebellion is about all those individual choices and moments of heroism enabling the kid to get to a place to take that shot. It is many Bothans, writ large. None of the people who died knew that what they did made a difference. Some knew if they hadn’t done it, it’d have failed… but none knew for sure. They went to their graves ignorant. It could have all been for nothing.
To that end, the ballooning of viewpoint characters becomes the point, those pilots as real as anyone else, the actors commitment to those fragments of time meaningful. And as we pull away from our cast, we come to the final scenes, with those nameless Rebellion troops being cut down by Vader, one by one. Look at the details as Vader looms out the dark. The half-lowering of the guns as each consider just not doing this.. and then raising as they decide they have no choice.
Any of them didn’t slow down Vader for a half second, the Death Star survives. Any of them.
Which leaves me aware that’s all we can do when facing fascism in the dark. We have no idea if what we do make a difference. But it may. You have to believe it may.
Imagine Sisyphus watches the boulder tumble back, time and time over. Imagine the centuries, millennia of frustration. Imagine taking a breath, stepping up to its familiar form, and rolling that boulder again.
You wonder why he does so.
He knows that, against all his history, one day maybe the boulder won’t tumble back.
Hope is all we have, but hope - whether new or old – can be cruel.
(Your picture was not posted)
It was in my newsletter (http://ift.tt/2oVqlAz) last year, and it’s not one that’s in the archive. Do sign up if you like this kind of thing.
***
I started Sunday Morning with the 11am showing of Rogue One at South London cultural institution that is the Peckham Plex. It was the last showing. It was one of the last showings in London. It’s the first time I’ve seen a film twice in the cinema since Fury Road.
I like it a lot. My one-line tweet review ROGUE 10/10 captures my basic feelings, but second time through, things are always going to change. You can’t cross that river twice. You change. The world changes. In the last month, more than most.
But I found it as effecting as first time, on average. Some bits more, some bits less, over-all similarly wet eyed. But it’s lingered in a different way. First time, I came out in a giggly fanboy rush. Second time, I’m pretty much crushed.
Being a working writer, I’m unpacking and trying to reversely analyse choices, and doing my own rewrites to make what I think the effect it’s looking for more efficiently. It’s just something I do, and have done for the vast majority of my life. It’s certainly true towards the end the tangle of game-logic makes it top heavy, and (as always happens when you explain so much) leads to even more questions . You can question the integration of all those fighter pilots into the final act, leaning into the “not a star wars film unless there’s a dogfight at the end” (I felt them weakest bits of Force Awakens, but landed better here for reasons I’ll go into…)
But underneath all that, I can’t question it too much, as I see its point and the reasons for doing so. That’s why we talk about choices, as it’s really about what you choose to prioritise. It’s all done to make the movie turn into a relay race, a chain of buckets. If any one individual doesn’t do their small thing, it fails, and the future for a galaxy far, far away is the Empire’s jackboot, forever.
This rebellion isn’t about one kid getting a lucky shot . This rebellion is about all those individual choices and moments of heroism enabling the kid to get to a place to take that shot. It is many Bothans, writ large. None of the people who died knew that what they did made a difference. Some knew if they hadn’t done it, it’d have failed… but none knew for sure. They went to their graves ignorant. It could have all been for nothing.
To that end, the ballooning of viewpoint characters becomes the point, those pilots as real as anyone else, the actors commitment to those fragments of time meaningful. And as we pull away from our cast, we come to the final scenes, with those nameless Rebellion troops being cut down by Vader, one by one. Look at the details as Vader looms out the dark. The half-lowering of the guns as each consider just not doing this.. and then raising as they decide they have no choice.
Any of them didn’t slow down Vader for a half second, the Death Star survives. Any of them.
Which leaves me aware that’s all we can do when facing fascism in the dark. We have no idea if what we do make a difference. But it may. You have to believe it may.
Imagine Sisyphus watches the boulder tumble back, time and time over. Imagine the centuries, millennia of frustration. Imagine taking a breath, stepping up to its familiar form, and rolling that boulder again.
You wonder why he does so.
He knows that, against all his history, one day maybe the boulder won’t tumble back.
Hope is all we have, but hope - whether new or old – can be cruel.
(Your picture was not posted)
